Five times John says no to Sherlock
by IHadBadDays
Summary: ...and one where he forgets how. The first five as one chapter and the final part as one, longer chapter. Second chapter will be rated M :
1. Chapter 1

**Five Times John Watson Says No To Sherlock And One Time He Forgets How**

**i.**

"No, Sherlock."

The tone is light but John hopes he has arranged his face into a suitably forbidding expression as Sherlock fondles the coat with a degree of rapture and adoration on his face that seem wildly out of character. This expression is immediately replaced with a scowl, reminding John he is nothing more than a spoiled two-year old trapped in a very tall adult's body. _With good hair_, John's brain supplies unhelpfully, and he allows himself only a millisecond to confirm that yes, Sherlock does indeed have excellent, face-framing, cheekbone-enhancing hair, before attending to the world's only consulting two-year old.

"It's very important to have a good winter coat." Sherlock tries, drawing himself up to his full height and sounding every inch as imperious as his brother. John remembers to lower his voice – this is a very exclusive shop in an area of Bond Street that probably doesn't take kindly to public spats over their products.

"I don't bloody well care. It's nine hundred pounds. Do you know how long it takes a normal person with an actual, not made up job, like me to earn nine hundred pounds?"

Still scowling, Sherlock rubs a piece of the pure wool sleeve between thumb and forefinger as if to prove its worth to John, and says hopefully, "You're much better than a normal person, John."

He lets the comment warm the top of his ears and then stifles his smile before he says sternly, a hand on Sherlock's resistant arm, "Nice try. Come on, we're leaving. _Without_ the coat."

**ii.**

"No." This one is more subtle, more complex, like the faintly crossed lines on John's skin, scars that only partially hide the truth of the injuries behind them.

_No, Sherlock_, _there is nothing wrong. But I cannot run by your side around London and defend you every second of the day and even more than that, I cannot watch you get hurt. I _will not_ let you get hurt. It goes my every instinct as a doctor and perhaps your only friend._

Sherlock doesn't hear these undercurrents in John's single, loaded syllable – he nods, satisfied. John doesn't speak for several minutes until his heart rate, set to a stutter by the image of Sherlock facing serial killers and god knows what else, slows to the melody of Beethoven drawn from Sherlock's violin.

**iii.**

"No!" It's triumphant, ringing out far too loudly across the quiet country pub they are supposed to be looking for clues within. Sherlock has tried to deduce things about John's childhood for twenty minutes now and he hasn't been wrong yet.

"You sucked your thumb. Slightly crooked teeth, a tendency to hold your hand near your mouth and pout slightly when you're worried." A bored drawl. John had expected Sherlock to get at least a couple of things right and therefore ignored this early defeat by taking offence at the word _pout _(hoping fervently he wasn't in fact doing so as he sulked).

Fifteen minutes later, staring at John with amused smugness, he was still reeling things off – "You did, of course, fail geography O-Level."

Feeling the prick of annoyance twenty years later, John narrowed his eyes.

"Yes. So what?" He took a mouthful of his beer, glancing to see if anyone had heard Sherlock's deductions. The detective looked positively gleeful.

"Nothing, John, I'm just playing the game. Making deductions, like you asked me to."

Smug bastard. "Actually, if you must know, I failed because I spent most of the lessons on the field, successfully trying to get into Kelly Askew's bra." John plays this as his trump card, knowing Sherlock's curious disdain for his stories of conquests flung across the globe. To his surprise, then, Sherlock raises one finger as though he has just remembered something.

"And you were... six-wait, no, fifteen when you lost your virginity? I imagine, given your colourful sexual history, it was to a friend of Harry's and very much your usual style – that is, a one-night affair." It's said with a raised eyebrow, daring John to prove him wrong for the first time in hours.

It is to John's immense satisfaction that he bursts with his "No!", slopping his beer across the table as he waves a hand in victory. Sherlock raises both eyebrows now.

"Actually, I was twenty-one. And I loved her."

And with that, John drains his pint and lets his face turn pink from unwittingly showing emotion in front of a man who is seemingly unlikely to ever understand. Sherlock sits in silence and appears to be reevaluating what he thought he knew about John Watson's heart.

**iv.**

"No," he says soothingly, Dr. Watson's gentle bedside manner in full persuasive force as he eases Sherlock back to the bed, his skin ice cold. John had known he was bound to relapse at some point – _statistically, a high number of addicts do in the first few years_, he thinks, and then he follows that swiftly with the more comforting _and a high number don't have a doctor living with them._ Still, the sight of Sherlock, shaking and dangerously close to losing consciousness shoots ice through his core and he has been by Sherlock's side without a single word of rebuke since the evening before. He will not let this happen again.

Sherlock moans, grasping and looking – despite his body having very nearly decided to finally give into Sherlock's persistent abuse – extremely annoyed. "Water, John."

John passes the glass and kicks himself for watching nervously as Sherlock sips, careful to see that he doesn't drop the glass with shaking hands and injure himself further. He seems to relax then into a sleep that John finds fascinating. His hair, curled and slick with sweat, is sticking to his temples, and his face has the sheen of one whose body is ejecting toxins through every pore – and yet, he looks merely ethereal rather than dangerously close to overdose. His prone figure looks smaller laid down rather than towering over John and the doctor feels a physical pang of emotion. John's hand hovers over Sherlock's shoulder, his mind gently debating the dubious outcome of laying a hand onto the pale skin for a mere second, when Sherlock starts and makes John jump, his hand quickly retracted.

He is still half-asleep. "I'm not going to die." he mumbles, and John cannot fathom whether it is a question or a statement, so he murmurs softly, "No, Sherlock, you're not. Not while I'm here."

**v. **

"Do you mind if I sleep in here tonight? My bedroom still contains higher levels of CO2 than is probably advisable, even for someone whose regard for their own health is as minimal as my own, and yet unfortunately I do have to sleep occasionally."

There are so many responses to this that John feels overwhelmed for choice. The classic eyeroll? It was effective, but Sherlock wasn't above rolling his own eyes dramatically, and besides – he'd already done that once today in response to a particularly insensitive comment about a parking warden's hairstyle. Mute shock that Sherlock Holmes wanted – was willing – to share bed space with John and his PTSD-fuelled nightmares? Probably best not to remind Sherlock of this or he would be dosing John's tea with muscle relaxants or something equally dubious. And then John thinks of waking at three in the morning, hot and disoriented and broken into pieces by his own memories, and he thinks of seeing the bone china curve of Sherlock's spine beside him, the flickers across Sherlock's eyelids as his own mind spun on, even in unconsciousness, and John suddenly finds he doesn't mind at all.

"No?"

It's a question as much as it is an answer, and John feels like he's just said 'yes' to something entirely different.


	2. Chapter 2

It should be very unnerving, sharing a bed with Sherlock Holmes. In reality, however, John is more unsettled by the fact that it's all alarmingly domestic.

"You sleep on the left, of course," Sherlock says, settling down onto the right side of John's bed with a neutral expression. John nods equably but follows it with a smiling, "Actually, I sleep in the middle. But I'll make an exception."

He'd meant it to be a dig at Sherlock for rendering his own sleeping quarters uninhabitable, but it sounded, now it was out of his mouth, an awful lot like the flirting John did with the (usually much shorter and more feminine) bed partners he entertained. Sherlock cocks an eyebrow and mercifully lets the opportunity to note this fact slide.

"Hmm. Well, I don't snore and you do, so take this as advance warning that I _will_ kick you if you wake me up." And with that, as John grins at him and settles onto his own side of the bed, he begins reading a book on medical uses for vinegar.

John is lying on his side twenty minutes later, in that weightless realm between sleep and waking, when he notices Sherlock's breathing is suddenly more laboured, deeper than usual. He freezes – surely Sherlock Holmes isn't having a quick wank in his bedroom over a book about vinegar? – and wrestles with the perfectly justified approach of being outraged or simply lying in abject shock until he's stopped, as bizarre as this situation is. Shock wins over (how audaciously like Sherlock this would be, if he wasn't the least sexual person John knows) and yet John finds himself getting oddly turned on by the thought of Sherlock touching himself only inches away. He swallows hard, shaking the image of his head, and as he feels himself becoming genuinely, undeniably, no-Sherlock-of-course-I'm-not-hard-at-the-possibility-of-you-tossing-off-in-my-bed aroused, he decides to face the situation head on, lest his own (clearly confused) sexuality make this a very awkward night's sleep.

What faces him when he turns round is not what he expects. Sherlock is slouched against the headboard, hands pressed to his cheeks in deep concentration and his knees bent at an ungainly angle so that his heels are almost tucked beneath him. He is breathing deeply, rhythmically, but he stops as soon as he feels John shift to face him, thankful for the darkness concealing what is almost certainly his very pink face.

"Oh – you're..." John falters, not sure exactly what Sherlock _is _doing. Sherlock's eyes snap open and John feels uncomfortably as though he is having his thoughts forcibly extracted. He looks lazily amused for a second.

"I'm thinking, John. Processing the data I have acquired throughout the day. What else would I be doing at this hour in your bed?"

It is excruciatingly clear to John that Sherlock knows exactly what he was thinking. He cringes slightly, aware he's still hard and thankful there's a duvet concealing this from Sherlock's deducing eye.

"Nothing. Nothing, just – woke me up, actually." Pointless lying, really.

"You weren't asleep." Sherlock replies, eyes glinting at John with the promise of the good doctor's embarrassment at his own wicked thoughts. John coughs, one of those awkward time fillers he seems to spend a lot of time employing after Sherlock speaks.

"Well, I was – nearly, and then you were...breathing." Mortified, John shifts slightly to accommodate the ache between his legs and notes Sherlock's eyes flicker to take this development in.

"You turned round looking alarmed at the thought of me _breathing?" _Sherlock lifts his eyebrows. _Busted. "_You have a one track mind, Three Continents Watson." Sherlock smirks and turns to face the other way, leaving John drowning in acute embarrassment and an erection that refuses to go away for another half an hour.

In the end, John forgets how to say no to Sherlock. He is woken at four in the morning by Sherlock muttering wildly in his sleep, nonsensical snippets of information that lead nowhere – "The jar, you must have noticed the way it...", "Don't touch that, you imbecile" – and then a period of quiet before he starts murmuring softly in a tone that settles somewhere around John's solar plexus and makes him feel vaguely dizzy.

"_You won't touch John, I'll kill you first..._" is the first thing he says, and John thinks fleetingly – his head filling with a buzzing static - that this man is the most deceptively loyal he's ever known. He inches his head closer, straining to hear more with the swelling pride that comes from overhearing something good said about oneself.

"_Mine_." This is the second and John has the sense not to assume anything; it could be a severed body part, it could be that bloody coat, it could be anything. So John moves ever closer again and waits. He doesn't know exactly what he's waiting for until he hears it in a whisper, softened by sleep and intoxicatingly low in a way that makes John's skin electric with tiny sparks.

"_He's _my_ doctor." _John feels a sob starting in his throat that is both inexplicable and overwhelming. He places a hand softly on Sherlock's forehead and traces the outline of his eyebrows with the lightest touch of his thumb, no longer caring that this man is insufferable or his flatmate or even that he never shows basic human courtesy, let alone attraction, to John. What John is acting on is instinct, the same way Sherlock and John always act around each other; to fight to the death is no great hardship when your stand to lose your only friend, shoulder-to-shoulder against half of London. He pauses as Sherlock's breath warms his palm as he aches to touch those lips, their absurdly Romantic cupid's bow, and then Sherlock's eyes are open and neither guarded nor surprised – he loops a hand round the back of John's head and says quietly, "You."

"Yes." He doesn't know how to say no. He doesn't know what answer Sherlock is expecting or even if this is a question but his breath is stilled in his chest and the only movement the insistent grip of Sherlock's hand in his hair, and so he forgets that with Sherlock the safest answer is no, and he says yes.

Then Sherlock nods, imperceptibly – _yes_, John thinks again – and his face meets John's in a kiss that is as tentative as it is needy, claiming John's mouth and breathing _mine_ into the spaces behind his teeth. He pulls John onto him, sitting up so that he is claimed like a prize in his lap and powerless to move except to press urgently into Sherlock's stomach – but John daren't break the kiss, he refuses to say no even for one second and so it becomes a battle of wills between oxygen and the most basic, insisten need. Sherlock's mouth mapping territory on John's neck, John steadying himself with a hand gripping onto the pale shoulder, a breathed '_Oh' _into his ear as John realises that Sherlock is working those dextrous fingers around his cock and it already has him closer to letting go than he would have believed possible in a matter of seconds. Sherlock is methodical; he knows exactly what he is doing as he nips at John's earlobes, winning him a low groan from John's clenched mouth, and rubbing him thumb lightly up and down to let him catch a breath before – _yes, Sherlock, god yes _– he begins a slow, driving rhythm .

John forces air into his lungs – hadn't even realised he has been holding his breath – "Sherlock, what are you-.." The hand is over his mouth before he has chance to speak and he realises that in this case, as with most things, John is powerless in the face of this unusual man. Sherlock does not stop the dizzying movement of his other hand but says, voice completely steady and an octave lower than John thinks he can handle, the ache in his balls beginning to cause his mind to cease coherent thought, "Do you trust me?"

And as he begins to lose the sense of reality, the only thing occupying his brain the feel of Sherlock owning him completely, he says, once more – "_Yes."_


End file.
